You’re a pigeon. Embrace it. — In the 1950s, B.F. Skinner got a pigeon to spend 16 straight hours pecking at a sheet of plexiglass, at an average rate of 2.5 pecks per second. What could have caused this frenzy? Was the pigeon held at gunpoint? Threatened with the murder of its family? …

Why I love Hyman Bloom’s Paintings — Hyman Bloom’s New York Times obituary opens with a fantastically backhanded compliment. A mystical and reclusive painter who for a brief time in the 1940s and ’50s was regarded as a precursor to the Abstract Expressionists and one of the most significant American artists of the post-World War II era…

It’s one of our most innate and reliable guides — “Would you take a pill that removed your boredom forever?” I almost said “yes.” Boredom is excruciating. Doing nothing — meditating, sunbathing, kicking down the cobblestones — is lovely. Boredom is an unscratchable itch layered on top of that glorious nothing. Who needs that? I almost said “yes,” but I…

During the best argument of my life, 1) I provoked my partner. 2) He yelled at me. 3) I thanked him. More precisely, it went something like this. One Saturday morning, I bring up the topic of possible weekend hikes. “In an ideal world, today I would — ” “Is…

Zuzanna Ginczanka’s “Non Omnis Moriar” — Zuzanna Ginczanka (born in 1917 as Zuzanna Gincburg) wrote her first poems at the age of 4. By 14, she had found her mature voice. At 19, she was a rising star in Warsaw’s avant garde. At 27, she was murdered by the Nazis. Two years before her death, she…

And other North Korea stories. — In 2006, an armored limousine rolled into the driveway of rabbit breeder Karl Szmolinsky. As Szmolinsky recalls, the vehicle contained more or less the entire staff of Germany’s North Korean Embassy. Szmolinsky prided himself on the size and quality of his beagle-sized…

Translating a Heartbreaking Poem — May 1939. These two words say it all: the spring before the war, the calm before the storm. They form the title of a poem written by the brilliant and ill-fated Zuzanna Ginczanka when she was only 22 years old. May is the month of love — especially when you’re…

A new type of meditation helped me reshuffle my memories — I’ve been doing a new type of meditation — “therapy” is an equally good word. There’s really nothing to it (all I do is set a 30-minute timer and sit quietly with myself), but the effects have been profound. What I mean by “sitting quietly with myself” is that I…

Why were the polls wrong in 2016 and 2020? — “Don’t sweat the polls,” The Atlantic reassured us this October. In 2016, forecaster Sam Wang vowed to eat a bug if Donald Trump won — and ended up having to. The memory was still fresh, but in the intervening years pollsters had worked hard to regain our trust. As The…